I think the flaw in our cultural understanding of the Bechdel test is that it has anything to do with the general feminism of a movie at all, when it's actually a test to see if you can project lesbianism onto some characters in an era where there is as a rule not going to be actual lesbian representation. Can I go home and wrote some super extrapolative femslash fanfic without having to create a character from scratch? Can I forgot for two seconds that this girl is 100% heterosexual? Does this movie throw my lesbian heart a single crumb?
I think the flaw in our cultural understanding of the Bechdel test is that it has anything to do with the general feminism of a movie at all, when it's actually a test to see if you can project lesbianism onto some characters in an era where there is as a rule not going to be actual lesbian representation. Can I go home and wrote some super extrapolative femslash fanfic without having to create a character from scratch? Can I forgot for two seconds that this girl is 100% heterosexual? Does this movie throw my lesbian heart a single crumb?